Hangovers & Hot Flashes

by Kim Gruenenfelder

  While, just below the surface, everyone’s emotions are like lava: simmering, swirling, and ready to explode at any time and burst through any random spot on the hill.

  Monday night Steve left, and the kids both fell asleep in my bed. We were like a little puppy pack. Steve returned Tuesday morning to help with drop off. Tuesday night, Roraigh asked if we could get up earlier and have me do both drop-offs, and “just not have Dad here. It’s weird.” I couldn’t tell if Megan agreed or not, but Steve hasn’t been in the house any morning since.

  Wednesday, Steve took them out to dinner. When they got back, Roraigh just angrily stormed to his room. Megan hugged me tightly, then burst into tears. When I texted Steve to ask what happened, he seemed oblivious. Insisted the kids were fine and talking about their days like it was a normal Wednesday.

  Normal. There’s that word again.

  Thursday was a little tricky. I now have to pick up two kids at two different campuses, and was eight minutes late to get Roraigh. But he was fine.

  All week, he’s been fine. Actually better than fine. He’s been stellar. Normally I think of him like some absent-minded professor: good grades in school, yet has to be told to bring his luggage to the airport. Can’t see a dirty dish to save his life. Can’t put dirty clothes anywhere other than the floor. But this week? Homework done without asking. Clothes in hamper. He even did a load of dishes.

  I know I should be grateful, but this is not normal. And I’m hearing his lava bubble in my head.

  His sister, on the other hand, has been moody as Hell. Crying one minute, angry the next, hugging me for dear life five minutes after that. (Finally, a grieving process I can get behind!)

  Case in point: As I heat up a pan to sauté shrimp and pour a pound of fettuccine into a boiling pot, Megan stomps into the kitchen to announce, “I’m never having kids!”

  While my first inclination is to quip something pithy like a “Probably for the best. They ruin everything.” I don’t want to sound too much like a sitcom Mom. So instead I tell her lovingly, “You and Roraigh are the best thing I’ve ever done.”

  “That’s your uterus talking. Not your brain," Megan points out in disgust.

  Sure. Why not?

  She continues, “Humans are biologically programmed to want to have children, a compunction that destroys our planet continuously with every diaper, every bit of trash, every can of soup we consume…”

  “Compunction?" Is she using that word right? Pretty sure she means “urge”…

  I lift my glass of diet soda up to my mouth to take a sip, but the smell is making me nauseous, and my stomach immediately jumbles into knots. I put it down and focus on my cooking.

  Megan continues babbling (I have long learned to tune out her monologues once they pass minute three. How is it twelve-year-old girls can monologue for so long, without taking a breath? Do they breathe out of their ears?) While she talks, I think back to the last time I remember getting nausea from the smell of a drink. It was coffee, and I was barely pregnant with Roraigh. With my first pregnancy, I couldn’t even walk into a Starbucks without doubling over and wanting to dry heave. When I smelled coffee that second time, I knew our family was about to be complete. That day was the happiest in memory. I had always wanted two kids, a boy and a girl, and back then everything in my life had suddenly fallen into place.

  And now, everything has just as suddenly exploded into jagged shards.

  “You mean compulsion," I hear Roraigh say, calmly sitting at the dining room table and reading from his phone.

  “What?” Megan snaps at her brother.

  “You said ‘compunction’ to have children. Compunction means guilt. See.”

  He hands Megan his phone. She reads it, then says in a completely unoffended tone, “Huh. Interesting.” She hands back the phone. “Well, the point is: men are pigs.”

  Not sure how we got to that conclusion, since I spaced out for a minute. But can’t say as I can argue the point.

  “Have you thought about online dating?” Roraigh asks me out of the blue.

  Yes, obviously I have thought about it. My husband’s been cheating on me and I haven’t had sex in almost a year. Match has crossed my mind. Hell, Tinder has crossed my mind. I also vaguely toyed with the idea of flagging down the first cute twentysomething in a ten-year-old beat-up old Camry driving down my street and inviting him in.

  But I have no intentions of sharing that with my fifteen year old. Careful to avoid eye contact, I grab my spatula to move around the garlic in the pan. “A little early for that. It’s been less than a week.”

  “Yeah. But you know what they say: the quickest way to get over someone is to get under someone.”

  “Who actually says that?” I ask Roraigh. Before he can answer, I add, “Besides, I don’t even know if I want to get over your father. I don’t know what I’m feeling right now.”

  The doorbell rings. Megan yells, “I’ll get it!” and quickly leaves the kitchen.

  Roraigh walks over to me with his phone and shows me the screen. “What about him?”

  I look over at the picture, which is of Roraigh on a field trip last year with his class. “What am I looking at?”

  “The Dad on the right. The one with the graying hair.”

  As I take the phone to get a better look, Steve walks in with a suddenly happy Megan. “Mom, Dad’s here.”

  Oh, Christ. At least this time he rang the doorbell. Earlier this week, he came in unannounced to pick up more clothes, and I tried to get him to relinquish his key. A battle that took over an hour, and which I lost. Which made me wonder how many more one-hour battles we’d be having and I’d be losing.

  “What are you doing here?” I ask, trying to suppress the anger in my voice, and noticing Roraigh silently taking his phone and walking away from his father.

  “I’m here for family dinner," Steve says cheerfully. “We’re still a family, right?”

  I turn to Roraigh. “Honey, can you finish the shrimp and keep an eye on the pasta for me?”

  “Sure Mom.”

  I grab Steve by the wrist, and silently yank him out of the kitchen and into our living room. When I know we’re out of hearing range, I snap in a whispered voice, “I thought we agreed you were going to text me if you wanted to come over.”

  “I did text you," he whispers back. “You didn’t answer.”

  I pull my phone from my pocket, and read his text. “That was all of ten minutes ago.”

  “And you didn’t answer back. You always answer your texts within ten minutes.”

  “Oh, for fuck’s sake. Are we really going to have an argument about how soon I answer texts. Go home Steve. Or should I say go back to your fuckden with your whore. You can see the kids tomorrow, as agreed.”

  I was hoping my ‘fuckden’ comment would cause Steve to storm out in a huff, but he doesn’t take the bait. Instead he looks at me pleadingly. “Roraigh won’t answer any of my texts.” Steve pulls out his phone to show me. “Look, I’ve sent him at least a dozen texts, and I’ve called five times. I go straight to voicemail.”

  I sigh loudly, but know I’m stuck. I calmly take Steve’s phone and walk back into the kitchen. “Roraigh, why haven’t you been answering your father’s texts?”

  Roraigh’s eyes do not leave the stove. “I’ve been busy.”

  “Too busy to answer a text? Or twelve?”

  At this he shrugs and focuses on cooking.

  Steve walks in, acting as though everything is… oh Hell, let’s just say normal again. He cheerfully pats on Roraigh on the back and asks, “So, are you pumped for your game next week?”

  “No one says pumped, Dad," Roraigh tells him through simmering anger.

  “Dad, come sit with me,” Megan asks Steve in her brightest voice. Steve sits down, and she immediately launches into a monologue about her day.

  As she talks, I rub Roraigh’s back and ask quietly. “Sweetie, are you okay?”

  “I’m fine," he snaps.

  H
e’s not, but I know my son well enough to know he’s also not ready to talk about it. I walk over to our wine rack. “I’ve decided to open a Barolo," I tell Steve. “Would you like a glass?”

  “Barolo with shrimp?” he asks.

  I suppress a sigh. “We could do a Viognier instead, but I’ll have to stick it in the freezer for twenty minutes.”

  “Or I could just have a beer," Steve says.

  I pull out the Viognier. “No. It’s fine," I say as I start to walk toward the freezer.

  Roraigh turns to his father and angrily asks, “Why don’t you just let her drink the kind of wine she wants? Why do you have to control everything? Why does it always have to be about you?”

  Everyone in the kitchen goes silent. For, like, thirty seconds, none of us say anything. Then Roraigh continues, “We have to see you tomorrow night because Mom said so, but nobody wants you here. You should go.”

  Again: silence. Roraigh and his father occasionally have their little Oedipus/ King Laius snippy moments, of course. But I have never seen him challenge his Dad like this. Steve looks at the floor. He begins carefully, “Roraigh, I’m sorry if you feel…”

  “No, you’re not. And beginning with, ‘I’m sorry if you feel…’ makes it not a goddamn apology! You’ve completely fucked Mom over here. You’ve completely fucked Megan and me over, too. And you don’t get to just waltz in here like nothing’s happened when we all know you’re fucking Ripley and Graham’s Mom.”

  Steve seems startled by that information. He looks to me, and I shake my head. “I didn’t tell him. I swear.”

  “Mom didn’t need to tell me. You’re terrible with computers. Every fucked up sext you ever wrote to each other is on your computer, and you accidentally sent a sext to me, which is how I discovered it in the first place. You’re a fucking asshole! And I want you out of this house. NOW!”

  Roraigh easily has two inches and thirty years on his Dad. This could get ugly quickly. Fortunately, Steve looks too stunned to move.

  “Roraigh,” I begin calmly, “I appreciate what you’re trying to do here, but you can’t kick your father out of…”

  “Why not?!” he snaps at me. “He’s cheating on you! He’s been fucking another woman for months, and everyone knew but you. Doesn’t that make you mad?! Doesn’t that make you want to beat the shit out of him?!”

  “Whoa. Okay, why don’t you go to your room and blow off some steam…”

  “Wait, I’m the one being punished…”

  “You’re not being punished," I quickly assure him. “If you’d rather go run around the block, that’s fine. I just think it’s important for you and your dad to not be in the same room right now.”

  “I’m not leaving.”

  And then the Mom gene kicks in. “Oh. You are. Now. Because I said so. Go.”

  Roraigh huffs, but leaves for his room. Over the course of the next minute, I turn off all of the food, and try to think of my next plan of attack. “Megan, would you like to go have dinner with your father? Out?”

  “Okay," she mumbles.

  “Great. I am going to stay with your brother. Steve, if you want to take Megan to your brother’s for an overnight, that’s fine. If you want to bring her home after dinner and still do tomorrow’s overnight, that’s fine, too. Just text me when you decide.”

  Steve quietly begins, “I think I should talk…”

  “I don’t," I interrupt. “Nothing you say is going to fix this. But some things I say might.”

  “Okay," Steve agrees reluctantly. “Megan, why don’t you go pack a change of clothes and your pajamas?”

  As Megan packs, I open the bottle of Barolo. Neither Steve nor I say a word to each other. I hear Megan knock on her brother’s door, and walk in. As they talk, Steve asks, “Do you think I should say good night?”

  “Why don’t you text him good night in a few minutes, and tell him I thought it was best if you just left?”

  Megan emerges, and the three of us say our goodbyes at the door. Megan hugs me so tightly that it makes me think back to the first day of preschool, when she didn’t want me to leave. “I love you so much," I tell her.

  “I love you, too.”

  “And you are the best thing I’ve ever done, no matter how many cans of soup you eat.”

  She giggles a little at our now private joke. Then Steve hugs me goodbye, and I watch the two of them leave. I lock the door, and make my way back to the kitchen. I open the wine and pour myself a glass.

  I take one sniff, and put it back down. More nausea. Oh well.

  I then head to Roraigh’s room, and ask through his door, “Can I come in?’

  “Sure.”

  When I walk in I see Roraigh lying in his bed, facing the wall. I gently sit down on the edge of the bed, and rub his back. “I really appreciate your defending me like that. I do. With all my heart. But it’s not your job to take care of me. It’s my job to take care of you.”

  Roraigh turns around, and I see he’s been crying. “Dad fucked up.”

  “Yeah, he did. Big time. But do you know what triangulation is?”

  “No.”

  “It’s when two people are having a problem, and rather than deal with it directly themselves, they start talking to each other through a third person. And it’s bad for everyone involved. You cannot be my protector. You have every right in the world to be mad at him right now. But he’s your father, and you’re going to need to find a way to work it out.”

  Roraigh shakes his head. “You barely talk to Papa.”

  “I know. And I hate it. And I miss having a Dad. Which is why I know how important it is to get through this. If you want to yell at him about what he is doing to you, absolutely. Go for it. If you want to go to family therapy, I am totally behind you. If you want to answer his texts with, ‘Fuck you! I don’t want to talk to you right now.’ then… actually try not to say ‘Fuck you’ to anyone if you can avoid it, but you know what I mean.”

  Roraigh looks down at his blanket. A tear streams down his nose and hangs there. “Deal?” I ask him gently.

  “Deal," he agrees, trying to sound masculine.

  I pull Roraigh into a hug, and he hugs me back. I can tell he’s still crying, but trying to breathe through it. I rub his back for awhile.

  “Still want dinner?”

  He nods. Then asks, “Mom. Are you sorry you got married? Like, are you regretting ever meeting him?”

  “Absolutely not," I say truthfully as I stand up. “He gave me the best two gifts in the entire world. You two are my ‘get out of jail free’ cards. Everything in my life led to you, so I can’t regret anything.”

  Roraigh stands up. “Thanks.” I put my arm around him and the two of us walk out of his room. Then he lightly jokes, “Even though we messed up the planet with too many diapers?’

  “My God. I love her to death, but that child has got to shut up once in awhile.”

  “Does she breathe through her ears?” Roraigh asks.

  I playfully smack him on the arm. “I thought that exact sentence earlier tonight.”

  “You didn’t.”

  “Verbatim. I swear.”

  Nineteen

  Zoe

  “You just need to let go,” I hear our trapeze instructor calmly tell Alex, who hangs high in the air with her hands and legs clasped tightly around the trapeze bar. “Just relax your hands...”

  “I am relaxing my hands!” Alex yells in a panic, hands clutched firmly to the bar.

  “Um… okay, then relax your legs.”

  “Yeah, that’s not happening," Alex announces. “How much would it cost to get a fire truck and a ladder out here?”

  “Ma’am…”

  “Seriously! I have a credit card! It’s in the red Hermes bag in the corner! Use the AmEx! I need miles anyway!”

  “It’s weird thinking of Alex as having a fear of heights," I say from the ground as I watch the instructor continue to try to gently coax Alex off of the bar and onto the net below. “Or a fear o
f anything for that matter.”

  “Actually, she has a fear of ducks," Lauren tells me as she, Kayla and our friend Cara (recently back from Disney World with her wife and kids) watch Alex sway in the breeze. “And commitment, obviously.”

  “Just let go, Bitch!” Our friend Vanessa yells, trying to lighten the mood as she waits her turn on the platform high above.

  “I will. I just need a minute!” Alex yells back.

  “Absolutely.” The instructor manning the net tells her calmly. “Take a moment. We all learn at our own pace.”

  “Kind of reminds me of the sloths at the zoo.” Cara says, crossing her arms while we continue to observe our friend. “You know how they’ll hang from a tree branch from all four paws, and just while away the day?”

  “Oh, zoo days…” I say nostalgically. “I miss zoo days.”

  “Rebecca and I have annual passes.” Cara offers. “Feel free to borrow the boys any time. I’m so not kidding.”

  “I may take you up on that. And I’m not kidding.”

  “Okay, you are being a fucking nightmare right now," Michelle seethes into her phone as she walks up to our group. “I managed to get Roraigh to your brother’s house without the use of a trip wire or a net, and you are going to talk to him… No, you can’t drop them off later. They are yours for the whole weekend. I am staying at Zoe’s. Or, with a little luck, some guy I’ve never met before. Now get your shit together and parent!”

  She angrily presses the off button to hang up on Steve. “He has one job this weekend," Michelle says in exasperation to us. “Stay with the kids, feed them, listen to them talk about how they are processing everything, and get them both to school on Monday in one piece. It’s not rocket science.” She turns to Cara. “Honestly, you are so lucky you’re married to a woman.”

  Cara shakes her head, smiling. “I see. And why is that?” she asks patronizingly.

  “Oh, come on," Michelle counters angrily.